Xi Jinping is the most powerful Chinese president in decades.
And he has many faces:
Tough-guy Xi cracks down on corruption.
Statesman Xi fights for free trade.
Nationalist Xi reclaims land in the South China Sea.
Visionary Xi aims to make China a great global power.
Here’s how a boy who was sent to the countryside to shovel sewage and feed pigs reached the
pinnacle of power.
Xi was born in Beijing in 1953.
His father Xi Zhongxun was a communist revolutionary leader and China's propaganda chief, who rose
to become a vice premier... before being purged in Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution
At the age of 15 Xi too was affected by the Cultural Revolution.
He was sent to a rural village in northwestern China where he lived in a cave house dug into
a hillside.
“He was feeding pigs.
You know, he was like cleaning toilets.
He was doing farming.
You know in his spare time, he would read books.
That’s Bloomberg Senior Government Reporter Ting Shi
"I cover China’s politics and foreign relations.”
While living in the countryside he became a voracious reader, picking up everything
from Victor Hugo to Ernest Hemingway
“He took one of his all-time favorite books
with him, that is Karl Marx magnum opus 'Das Kapital', he read it three times over seven years.”
In 1975, Xi was allowed to return to Beijing where he studied chemical engineering, but
his work as a Communist Party member prevailed.
Xi rose through the party ranks in the rapidly industrializing coastal provinces of Fujian
and Zhejiang.
His big break came in 2007 with his promotion to top leader of Shanghai.
The job aided Xi's ascension to the party's all-powerful Standing Committee, setting him
up to succeed Hu Jintao as Party Leader, Commander in Chief and President.
By 2013, the transformation was complete.
Xi was China's paramount leader.
“There was nothing obvious in the early part of his career to suggest he would become
one of China’s most powerful leaders ever.
Having taken power, Xi has demonstrated his flair for hands-on management and strict Communist
Party discipline.
He's launched a Mao-style campaign to tighten up controls on ideology,
media, and dissent by arresting journalists and activists.
“And he has been overseeing probably the harshest crackdown on activism and human rights
groups in the party’s recent history.”
In addition, Xi has pledged a blizzard of economic reforms and ordered the biggest military overhaul
since the 1950’s.
He has this great belief China totally deserves to restore its place in the world.
“Chinese Dream” is the phrase he coined to convey this message.
While Xi is seen as an able leader at home, he's only starting to establish China's new
power on the world stage.
And President Donald Trump has accused Xi of failing to curb the
nuclear ambitions of North Korea.
“So far he doesn’t seem to be able to give up on North Korea because the fear about
collapse of North Korea and the consequences of that.”
But Xi is the first Chinese president not to visit North Korea and has argued China
isn’t responsible for them.
And despite their disagreements over North Korea and trade, Xi and U.S. President Donald
Trump hit it off.
“When he was in Mar-a-Largo on his first visit to the U.S. he seems to be totally in
his element!
He was telling Trump about the history of the Korean peninsula and Trump was rolling out
his grandchildren to sing a Chinese song for Xi Jinping.”
Just how long their warm rapport will last remains to be seen.
Back home, Xi will complete his consolidation of power with a party congress in Beijing
in October 2017, when roughly half of China's top officials will be replaced.
The questions now, are will he use that power to force through reforms needed to revamp
the economy?
And will China emerge to rival the U.S. as the world's No.1 superpower?